Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the advanced copy of Mistakes Were Made.

I thought this was a fun Mrs Robinson type of story. Cassie and Erin's relationship was passionate and steamy, and even though they were keeping secrets from others, I was rooting for their relationship to work out.

I enjoyed Wilsner’s first book (Something to Talk About) well enough, but I LOVED Mistakes Were Made! This second book from them was spectacular - super well-written, had so many emotions, fantastic friendships, and it was just all-around brilliant. I highly recommend it for everyone, whether you know you like sapphic romance (2 bi ladies who fall for each other), aren’t sure, or want to just check and see - this is the one to start with! Meryl Wilsner knows what they are doing with this book!

It’s very steamy, has some great tropes (age gap, lgbtq, best friend’s parent, secret relationship, denial of feelings, long-distance) - and without giving away the whole incredible story… that’s about all I can say there. Super strong friendships are tested as the girls finish out school and explore and experience their early 20’s life and become adults. Great coming-of-age story.

Audio version - narrated by Quinn Riley and Stephanie Németh-Parker. I have listened to many audiobooks narrated by Németh-Parker, and I’m a big fan of hers. This was my first listen by Quinn Riley and I really enjoyed her voice. They were a fantastic pair! Both did an excellent job - 5-stars to each of them also. I’m a huge proponent of having different narrators for different points of view, to keep the characters separate as we listen. It’s critical to know which one is speaking as the story progresses. It’s something huge and not always done (only having a single narrator for multiple characters). Thank you for doing it!

I received an advance review and advance listen copy from NetGalley, St. Martin's Press (St. Martin's Griffin), and Macmillan Audio, and this is my honest feedback.

I really enjoyed this book. It's an age gap romance about Cassie who unwittingly hooks up with her best friend's mom. I usually don't love age gap as a trope, but I liked how this one was written.

It's really interesting to go from Wilsner's first book, Something to Talk About, which was super slow burn, to this one, which starts out with sex in the first chapter and then goes on from there. There is a lot of sex in this book. But it makes sense for the story, it's not gratuitous or anything.

There is also very little angst in the book, and the third act break up was virtually non-existent, which was a nice change! There really isn't anything I can say against the book, it was really well written, I enjoyed the characters and the story. The only reason I'm not rating it higher is because I don't think that it's a book that I would read again, and I'm trying to get better with my rating. 5 stars belongs to books that I'm going to read over and over again.

3.5⭐️

Thank you so much to St. Martin's Griffin and Netgalley for providing an advanced copy of this! All thoughts and opinions are still my own.

This was my first Meryl Wilsner book and it won't be my last. This was steamy, swoony, and completely binge worthy. This wasn't my favorite romcom of all time, but there was so much to love about this sapphic romance!

So let's start with what I absolutely loved.

First of all - this book is HOT. For so long it felt like we only got sweet, soft F/F romances. But no more. This book brought the steam and I was living for it. The chemistry between these 2 characters was so fantastic. And I loved how unapologetically queer it was all around.

But not only did this have a fantastic romance, but the I loved the friendships. This really showed how platonic love can be just as important as romantic love. The friendship these girls had was fierce and complex and at times strained. I just loved this exploration of what it means to be friends and all the ways those relationships can be stretched and strained - especially in college.

However there were a few things I didn't 100% get on board with...

While I loved the friendships as a whole, I found our heroine Cassie to be difficult to root for at times. I don't mind an unlikeable MC a lot of the time, but in a romance I need to get behind both love interests. And sometimes Cassie made it difficult. She makes so many toxic and harmful choices and then pins it on other people - often her friends.

I just really struggled with how terribly she treated Parker at times and tried to blame it on Parker...

But what really kept this from being a higher rating for me was the pacing of this book. Was it hot? Yes. Were the relationships complex and developed? Yes. Did I enjoy my reading experience all the way through? Not 100%....

For some reason this book really dragged through the middle. I felt like we were having the same conversations over and over and over again with little variation or momentum. And despite this book being only a little over 300 pages, it felt too long.

I'd also like to mention that the age gap, and therefore inherent power imbalance, was never addressed or acknowledged.

However, if you're looking for a fun, steamy, age gap romance, this is definitely one worth checking out! I love how Meryl Wilsner wasn't afraid to go there with this messy, queer love story and I definitely plan to read more from them in the future!

"Mistakes Were Made" packs some serious steam. Be prepared to blush as senior, Cassie Klein, picks up a woman at an off campus bar only to find out the next day it was her best friend's mom in town for family day. Finding out this important piece of knowledge while out to breakfast with said friend and mom isn't the most ideal way. But the chemistry between Cassie and Erin is so strong that even though they KNOW they should stop they just keep finding their way back to one another.

"Mistakes Were Made" is a steamy romance with a funny and wholly entertaining plot as readers wait for the other shoe to drop and the blow up to commence. With three strong and opinionated college friends and an independently successful and much older mother, the characters are relatable for readers across a wide breadth of backgrounds and age. Do not miss this engrossing read, but be warned the steam is hot hot hot.

I will say right off the bat, that I really appreciated how Mistakes Were Made got into its promised plot immediately. Quite a few times a synopsis has intrigued me enough to pick up the book, and then the events described in the summary don't occur until like 30% in -- so I'm just passing time knowing exactly what is to come, waiting for it to happen, and to finally get to the stuff that I picked up the book for in the first place!
I was surprised at Erin's age reveal...based on the summary I thought she'd be in her 50s, but she's only 38 -- which is still a 16-year age difference aka not insignificant, but it didn't present the salacity-factor that I expected. Obviously the "mom of best friend" presents its challenges regardless of age, as boinking your best friend's mom is a big deal no matter how old she is!

I was thoroughly enjoying Mistakes Were Made until about halfway through, when I looked and was somehow only 46% in. Which isn't necessarily bad...but I unfortunately found the pacing and plot lacking after the halfway mark. The second half was pretty slow for me, and I noted multiple times that whatever I'd just read could have (should have?) been tightened up.
One thing that very much did work for me is that Parker, the daughter and best friend of our lead duo, was very unlikable (to me). Her unlikability worked in the novel's favor, because I as the reader did not feel bad for Parker in terms of Cassie and Erin's relationship. I of course understand that Erin is Parker's mother and will feel conflicted, especially because we have the dual perspectives to show us that, but Parker was such a brat that I did not find myself caring about her feelings...at all.

Two minor things that weren't minor to me:
1. What is up with the lack of passwords on these people's phones?! It wasn't even plot-driven, there was truly no reason for this lack of security. It stressed me out!
2. The three main friends called each other "babe" and "boo" every other sentence, which wouldn't annoy me usually but it was seriously almost every time they addressed each other and it really took me out of the book. Maybe my friends and I are the weird ones, but we do not call each other "princess" and don't intend to start.

The gist: Enjoyable enough plot and story, predictable enough to be comforting, too long for my taste and with characters who were either annoying as people or did annoying things.

Potential content warnings: Mom with alcohol and/or drug issues (all off-page), brief mention of childhood food insecurity.

My rating is a two out of five. This certainly wasn't objective trash, it just...wasn't for me. And that's okay!

4.5/5 stars (rounded up)

Thank you Macmillan Audio for the advanced listening copy!

Cassie and Erin meet at a bar and decide to hook up -- your basic one night stand with great sex. Their time together turns suddenly less basic when Cassie goes to breakfast with her best friend, Parker, and her mom... who ends up being ERIN. Suddenly the two find themselves sneaking around and falling into a routine. Are they dating? Hooking up? Does Parker know? How the heck are they going to get out of this predicament without hurting anyone?

I didn't know that I needed a spicy, forbidden, age gap romance in my life but I DID! This was a great story about friendship, forgiveness and love that I wasn't expecting. Both Cassie and Erin's characters were super likeable and I rooted for them throughout the story. There were times where I felt like things were dragging on a little bit, which is why this isn't 5 stars, but it sure was close to perfection! This was a super spicy story but never felt forced or like too much. The characters were well-developed and deep, making this a super enjoyable read overall.

Disclaimer : I received a free copy of this book and chose to review it. This in no way impacts my opinion.

Content Warning: bierasure, homophobia, cheating (all in conversations and addressed)

This was a little different than I expected but in a good way. I thought that there was a lot of really great sex scenes and I'm glad there wasn't the same type of 3rd act break-up/get back together that you typically see in romance novels. I liked the way this played out, even though it was a bit hokey. I also would have liked a bit more emotional maturity from Cassie, but what can you expect from a 21-year old who is sleeping with their friend's mom lol.

I listened to this as an audiobook and there are way more sex scenes than you think there will be, so keep those headphones on tight!!!

Cassie recently broke up with her boyfriend after he cheated on her. Erin is in town for her daughter's parent weekend at college- except her daughter is at dinner with her ex-husband. Both Cassie and Erin end up at the same bar, were instantly attracted to each other, and ended up having some fun in Erin's car. The next morning, Cassie agrees to go to breakfast with her best friend, Harper, as a buffer. Then, she meets her best friend's mom, who is none other than Erin.
Cassie and Erin try to resist their attraction, but each time they see each other, it gets harder and harder. They have rules, that keep being broken. They ultimately stop fighting it- as long as Harper doesn't know.

I really liked most of the book. However, it started to drag around halfway. It is hard to talk about without spoilers, but it was a bit repetitive and didn't really go anywhere for a while.
Cassie is a great character.

I listened to the audiobook. The book is written as a dual POV- Cassie and Erin. Each POV had a different narrator- which I appreciate. However, their pacing was not the same. While I have no complaints about their individual performances, it does irk me when the pace doesn't match.

I received a copy in exchange for an honest review.

A spicy romance that features Cassie, a college student, who meets an attractive lady, Erin, at a bar. Both are aghast the following day when they realize Erin is Cassie’s best friend’s mom.

This books does a good job of explaining the protagonist’s motivations and giving each an inner life beyond the romance. The side characters/best friends were delightful and deserved more attention. Although I enjoyed the relationship, I felt like some of the obstacles were anticlimactic and underdeveloped. A fun read.

Rounded up from 3.5 stars

Trigger Warnings: Alcohol, bar, sex, cursing, past cheating/violence, masturbation, absent parent, parental abandonment, drunk, house party, underage drinking, sexting, divorce, lying, sex in public, marijuana, misogyny

Representation: Bisexual, Genderqueer, Pansexual

Mistakes Were Made is the MILF book, or a rom com about college senior Cassie who accidentally sleeps with her best friend’s mom after picking her up at a bar one night. Unaware who Erin is, Cassie has some fun with the stranger. The next morning when Parker drags her to breakfast with her mom, she ends up sitting across the table from her night before hook-up. This dual POV lays out the next years worth of encounters during which the two swear to never do it again. Can they put the past in the past or are they drawn back to each other repeatedly? And what happens if Parker were to ever find out?

You know what I hate about books that you fall in love with while reading? You get through all of this good stuff then you know there’s going to be a bad turn. Once that happens, you’re just wishing for a resolution sooner rather than later. The thing is that those resolutions happen at the end of the book, meaning once the problem is resolved, this book you now love will come to an end. This is the basic formula for romance novels. Mistakes Were Made loosely follows this formula but it doesn’t even matter! This has easily become one of my top 5 favorite books of all time! This book is amazing and totally worth every page! There is no fillers or fluff and everything is just perfect!

This book is definitely sex positive! Just In case you didn’t know, the premise is mistakenly sleeping with your best friend’s mom. That being said, if you don’t like sex on the page, this isn’t the book for you. If you’re okay with it, man is this book good!! I loved all of the sex scenes and I have such a soft place for people who have sex and then end up falling in love! The scenes were written so well and I loved the focus on woman loving woman/pleasuring the woman!

I honestly can’t say enough about this book! It was so great! I loved our messy leading ladies and the entire ensemble! Messy gays, messy adults, messy gay adults- we need so many more books with these! I absolutely loved seeing a full adult make mistakes and just exist in this world! She was so relatable! I thought Cassie was also relatable as the “adult” who doesn’t feel like an adult. Both characters portrayed parts of growing up that I think we don’t get to see enough!

Age Gap; Best Friends Parent; Care Taking; College; FF; Forbidden Love; Forced Proximity; Holiday; Long Distance Relationship; One night Stand;

This was a good romance, the first one I've read with the best friends parent trope and it worked out well. Beyond physical attraction I was totally sold on the chemestry between the characters but I had a good time reading.

I really enjoyed this book. The spice factor was more than I'm used to when reading. The author did an amazing job with character development for all characters but especially well for Cassie. I liked how the chapters swapped back and forth between Cassie and Erin.

I loved this story! Erin and Cassie’s chemistry was off the charts. I did struggle a bit during the third aft conflict because they are both adults and could’ve just opened their mouths. All that aside, I felt their internal conflicts were realistic and loved the chapters that included a therapist as well. 10/10 recommend!

This book surpassed my expectations!

Romcom isn't always my thing, but sapphic romcom that is funny is definitely in my wheelhouse. And this one delivered!

We got off to a bit of a rock start - in the first chapter, the description of Erin seemed to have been written from the male gaze, not the female gaze, which is something I haven't seen in a sapphic novel, so I was concerned the entire book would be written that way. But as I continued it got much better. While I would personally tweak a few sentences to make the descriptions of the women softer, more "luscious curves" and less "nice tits," that's completely the writer's prerogative. And the spice was *chef's kiss* perfect!

The romance, the suspense, everything delivered. I especially admire how the writer wrote from the perspective of both a 21yo brash woman and a 35yo doctor and made them completely different and both totally fitting to the characters' personalities. *applause*

I would absolutely recommend this to my friends!

Age gap, daughter's best friend, steam galore. This book started with a bang, in more senses than one. The narrator managed to give us these two very different characters and give them each their depth and personality. Age gap is often a bit tricky and to add it, we are talking about the mother of the best friend which is even weirder, but when attraction hits, they just can't keep their hands from reaching to the other. It was both sweet and plenty steamy. Narration easy to follow, likable characters and a love story that took them by surprise.

Mistakes Were Made by Meryl Wisner is a good time! We meet Cassie and Erin - two women who meet at a bar and go home together. What they didn't expect is to see each other out at breakfast the following morning when Erin is taking her college age daughter out during parents weekend and her best friend Cassie joins. What follows is the two doing their best to stay away from each other but inevitably being drawn together.

Overall, this was really fun and I breezed through it. I liked the representation of female relationships and it was fun to stay guessing about what would happen. What I missed was depth. I found the characters to be surface level, with very little connection beyond the physical level and the tension in the book was barely explored and very quickly resolved. It left me wanting more! I would still recommend this though - it was an enjoyable read and it was the perfect book to breeze through on my TBR when I was feeling stuck.

The audio narration by Jeremy Carlisle Parker; Quinn Riley; Stephanie Németh-Parker was fantastic. They made it an extremely entertaining read that kept me engaged throughout. I appreciate the casting choice to have two women for each perspective.

Mistakes Were Made is out 10/11/22. Pick this one up! Thank you to Netgalley and Macmillan Audio for the ARC.

Mistakes Were Made was a book that was written excellently, but simply was not for me plot-wise and age gap-wise. I decided to DNF at 43% after various things that made me uncomfortable, mainly the power dynamic between Erin, a 38-year-old mother, and Cassie, a 21-year-old college student who is friends with Erin's daughter Parker.

Erin was obviously a young mom when she had Parker, and luckily Cassie and Parker weren't truly best friends until Parker said it as they had only known each other a month or so, which makes the premise better in someways. And the age gap itself wouldn't be that weird if it was, say, 31 and 48, but with 21 and 38 there's still a weird power dynamic at play being in completely different life stages, and with Cassie only 2 years out from being a teen. The uneven balance of power showed up even more when Cassie went to stay with them for Christmas and got to experience being cared for in what seemed to be like a parental/child way, especially considering Cassie never had that care from her own mother growing up.

I do love Meryl Wilsner's writing style, and the pace at which the story unfolds. Despite being uncomfortable with the relationship between Cassie and Erin itself, I did always want to know what was going to happen next. I really wish the power dynamic or age difference had been different, because then I would've loved this book. Wilsner also writes killer sex scenes, because holy shit they were hot. But the relationship really read like a traumatized, fresh-out-of-teenhood young woman with mommy issues meets a middle-aged, almost-freshly-divorced woman having a midlife crisis.

As much as the friend and daughter Parker was insufferably annoying, ungrateful and immature, I still felt the most bad for her. Almost the whole time, I just kept thinking - like Parker and Cassie's friend Acacia, and at the risk of sounding like a judgemental prude - is it really that hard to keep it in your pants? Especially for Erin, who has the upper hand in so many ways... I don't believe that someone who cares so much about improving her already supposedly rocky relationship with her daughter would be unable to control herself to the point where she's continuing to instigate makeouts/sex with her friend, and while her daughter is performing on stage or down the hall in the same house.

Also, the way Erin was hot and cold with Cassie instead of just communicating like a mature adult was so frustrating and cowardly. Giving this young woman who's already vulnerable mixed messages by being a bitch to her one second then kissing her the next, all because she couldn't tell Cassie they needed to put a stop to this and then she couldn't help herself... major red flags.

With how often power dynamics were brought up as an issue for the MCs in Something to Talk About and were frequently addressed, it was disappointing to see how it was glossed over in this book. Near the beginning Erin thinks "fucking a college student was bad enough, but fucking a sophomore was unthinkable", but does 2 years - or "senior" rather than "sophomore" - really make that much of a difference though, when the person you fucked is still only 21?

Overall, I wish Cassie hadn't been in college and that they each were 5-10 years older. When you're in college/university, you still have a lot of growing and maturing to do; you're at a completely different stage in life than someone who is 38, long graduated, has an adult child and been divorced. This is super evident with the two characters and I just couldn't get past it; it gave me the "ick" so much especially because there wasn't much in terms of plot outside of the two characters wanting to fuck each other. I do think if one can get past the ages (or are not bothered by it), then you will enjoy this book, especially if you like spice. Wilsner is a great writer, and the narrators of the audiobook did a good job. Just definitely not the book for me.

Well this book was a spicy delight. When college senior Cassie hooks up with an older woman after a few drinks at the bar she is shocked to discover that the mysterious Erin is introduced to her the next morning as the mother of her friend Parker. The pair are still fiercely attracted to each other so when Parker invites Cassie home with her, Cassie and Erin continue their secret relationship.

I am not usually one for age gap, and this one was quite a large age gap (22 and 38), but the book was just so well written that it worked. I really liked both Erin and Cassie. Each had their own issues they were working through, but they brought out the best in each other. I liked that while the book starts with a super steamy scene, we still got a lot of relationship development over time between the pair. I also loved all the side characters and would very happily read a book about Parker or Acacia.

I listened to about 80% of the book with a few chapters hear and there read. I really enjoyed both Quinn Riley and Stephanie Németh-Parker as narrators. Both gave great performances and brought the characters to life.

Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press, and MacMillan Audio for the ARC and ALC in exchange for an honest review.

4.5 ⭐ rounded down!

This book was spicy! 🌶️

Of course, I mean that in the best way possible. The chemistry between Erin and Cassie was established in the first chapter when we dove into a "sex in the bathroom" scene and I was hooked. One thing I really loved was that their relationship became so much more than just physical. They may have made some questionable decisions, but ultimately they stayed true to themselves and went for what they wanted. The only reason I docked half a star was because I did get a little tired of ALL the spice. I love me a good sexy scene, but there was a lotttttt.

If you're looking for a fun and sexy "best friend's mom" romance with LGBTQ+ representation, here it is! Thank you Netgalley and Meryl Wilsner for the ARC! Run don't walk to get your copy!